There is an odd contradiction in the paperwork of home ownership. We sign a mortgage for twenty-five or thirty years without much hesitation. We plan an extension for when the children are teenagers. We talk about the house we will retire to, the land we will leave to the grandchildren. And then a phone call comes about a friend who went to bed and did not wake up, or a news report of an earthquake that levelled a town in seconds, and we are reminded that we are not promised next month, let alone the final payment.
Psalm 90 is the Bible’s great meditation on that contradiction. It is the only psalm credited to Moses, a man who spent forty years in the wilderness without a permanent house, and it begins in an unexpected place.
A dwelling place that outlasts us
“Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations” (Psalm 90:1, NKJV).
Before he says anything about how short life is, Moses says where home really is. Not a tent in the desert. Not the land they have not yet reached. God himself. Generation after generation, the people had moved, camped, packed up and moved again. The one constant address was the Lord.
That is worth sitting with in a culture where so much of our identity, security and family pride is tied to property. Houses are good gifts. But they are not the deepest shelter we have. Families have lost houses to fire, hurricanes, foreclosure and inheritance disputes, and found that God was still their home.
Grass in the morning
Then Moses turns to human frailty, and he does not soften it. We are like grass that flourishes in the morning and withers by evening (Psalm 90:5-6). Our years come to an end like a sigh (verse 9). Seventy years, perhaps eighty if we are strong, and they are soon gone (verse 10).
It is not morbid. It is honest. And the honesty leads to a request: “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12, NKJV).
To number our days is not to count them anxiously. It is to treat them as the limited, precious things they are. In a household, that changes what we do with ordinary time.
What numbering the days looks like at home
It might mean noticing how many evenings are swallowed by quarrels over small things: who left the gate open, whose turn it was to fill the tank. Is this how we want to spend the days we have been given together?
It might mean not waiting for Christmas or a birthday to say what matters. Calling the father you have not spoken to since the argument about the land. Telling your spouse you are grateful, on a Tuesday, for no reason.
It might mean putting practical things in order out of love rather than fear: a will, clear title papers, a note of where important documents are kept, so that if the day comes sooner than expected, the family is not left with confusion on top of grief.
And it might mean asking whether the house itself is consuming days that should belong to people. The overtime to pay for a bigger home than we need. The weekends spent on renovations while the children grow up in the next room. A heart of wisdom weighs those trade-offs honestly.
Establish the work of our hands
The psalm does not end in despair. Moses asks God to satisfy us early with his mercy, so that we may rejoice all our days (verse 14). And then he closes with a builder’s prayer, repeated for emphasis: “establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands” (Psalm 90:17, NKJV).
So the brevity of life does not make our work meaningless. The blocks laid, the mortgage paid, the garden planted, the children raised: all of it matters. But it matters most when it is placed in God’s hands and built within his larger story. A short life and a long mortgage can sit together, as long as both are held by the One who has been our dwelling place in every generation.
For reflection
- If you knew you had one year left in this house with these people, what would you change this week?
- Is there anything you have been meaning to put in order for your family’s sake?
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Teach us to number our days. Keep us from wasting them on small quarrels and endless striving, satisfy us with your mercy, and establish the work of our hands. Amen.
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